Iron Chamber of Memory (24 page)

Sobs smothered her words. She made other sounds, inarticulate, broken. Henry could no longer make out what she was saying. From her expression, it was clear she was seeing her own young body lying motionless, dead in her marriage bed.

Her tears were too much for him. He caught her up in his arms. His heart overflowed with sympathy for her. He could see it all. She was desperate, trapped by this curse, which now had become deadly. Whatever she had done to draw him back to her was justified.

As for Manfred—Henry would have gladly killed anyone coming between him and Laureline. And Mandrake, for all that he had sounded so reasonable when he and Henry had spoken in here, was still the only person Henry knew with a knowledge of mesmerism.

And yet…

She whispered, “Outside, you and I are cowardly, ashamed to admit our love, but in here we are true, we are better, we are strong, we are not afraid! Not ashamed of our truth, not afraid to cast aside all the petty little rules and laws of properness and propriety! How I hate to see you, like a giant tied down by the little strands of Lilliputians! You can break all the world’s rules with one arm, and with the other, create for us, for you and me, a world where we can be ourselves, true to ourselves, a secret place of love and passion to endure forever. Can you make such a world for me? Are you strong enough?”

“I will do anything for you,” he said with simple grandeur.

“Then leave your cane, as I said!” She hiccupped as she spoke, gulping air. “Take out your memorandum book and remind yourself to ask Manfred to step into this room to talk about, oh, something interesting. And then you are going to hit him with that walking stick in the head and kill him.”

Henry merely narrowed his eyes.

“You must kill him,” she cried, her voice shrill. “You must!”

Henry said, “I cannot kill my best friend.”

“You would rather he kill me?”

“He was perfectly calm last time I spoke to him in here. He must have just been angry. Surely, he will not be so wrathful the next time.”

She started at his words, her eyes growing wider. “B-but, Henry! My love! You did not see him! His eyes!” She shivered touching her neck again. “He was clearly mad! I mean…insane, not angry. Madmen can often fool people with their calmness for a little while.”

“Nonsense! I have known Manfred for years. He is not mad!” said Henry, though he could not help remembering some of the strange things Mandrake had said about demons and witches.

“But what if– What if he is insane in this world, and he needs the outside world to be sane?”

Henry was startled by the idea. He had never considered such a thing.

She said, “It is not impossible, is it? We are in love in here, but not out there. What if he is insane in here, but not out there?”

Henry swallowed, “I do not know what to say. Or even what to think.”

She stood on tiptoe and kissed him. She whispered bravely, “You will find the strength.”

Henry opened his mouth to speak, but he had no words, no excuses. The reality was simple and stark. If Mandrake were mad, no doctor of the outside world could help, no treatment. Yet Manfred in the outside world was sane and good. Henry had never seen him show any sign of temper out there. But in here…

Henry remembered the murderous rage upon the face of Mandrake, as he spoke of the death of his aunt and cousins. Manfred might be a man of peace, but Mandrake was clearly capable of such a violent crime.

And the wedding was soon, and getting sooner, and the best man would no longer have an excuse to be staying overnight. Then Manfred would carry his happy, giggling bride in over the threshold to this room, this chamber. Their eyes would grew wide as they remembered, and while the well-wishers outside cheered and threw rice, Mandrake would choke the life out of the girl, and her green eyes go dark.

Laureline’s wide green eyes watched his face carefully. She spoke in a slow, soft voice he had to strain to hear. “You must, Henry. This is our only chance at happiness. Think of it. Once outside, you need never remember this chamber again, or what happened in it. I will be a widowed bride, yearning for comfort; you’ve already begun to waken to your love to me. He simply will be out of the picture. We will remember all this as some sort of accident, as if he had been surprised by some ragged beggar, or torn by a wild animal.”

“No,” he said, “No, I could never hurt Manfred.” But the hope that surged through him at the thought of having her to himself, so easily, so simply, left his voice weak.

What had really happened in the chamber between Mandrake and Laureline? Had she perhaps done something to anger him? If Laureline had tried some trick on Mandrake, similar to the one she tried upon Henry with the hypodermic and the drugs, he would not be able to entirely blame the man for his wrath. Or perhaps the unknown forces arrayed against them had found a way to influence Mandrake within this chamber, to convince his friend that Laureline or Henry had some part in the death of his family?

Or had Mandrake deceived Henry during their last conversation, perhaps in a desire to lure Henry back outside where he could not remember the truth? Had his friend, or his friend’s insane alter ego, been the one who had cast this spell after all?

Had Henry been deceived by Manfred’s friendship all this time, like a dupe?

The idea of Mandrake, or anyone, laying their hands upon the woman he loved in violence transformed Henry’s blood into boiling lava.

Laureline pried the walking stick out of his hand and pushed him gently back on the divan, murmuring, “Shush, shush, my love. We can speak of this later. Later…” and she smothered his words with tearful kisses.

It was perhaps an hour later when she resumed speaking of her fears. Hour after hour she spoke, sometimes weeping in his arms, sometimes cold and threatening. She flattered and cajoled and demanding and argued and screamed and threatened to kill herself, and then joked and pouted as if what she asked were no great thing after all. She told him it would bind the two of them together, seal their love in blood, forever.

His strength drained away and was lost.

He agreed.

The light in the stained-glass windows was turning from gray to pink with the dawn. Up she rose in the half-light, and donned her stockings and shoes so slowly it was as if she had never seen her own legs before, and was delighted at their proportions and beauty. She drew a black silk robe about her shoulders, the same hue as her hair, which was unbound and floating about her.

“I will go to bring him here. Smite him with your fathers’ walking stick and slay him. Take it in your hand and stand behind the door to take him from behind. There must be no errors. Oh! And before I forget: write yourself a note to lend me the key he gave you to the Silver-White Lotus Chamber next door. Mandragora won’t let me go in there, and it has been bothering me.”

She walked out the door. Her heels clicked with her light, rapid footfall as she went up the stairway.

Henry stared at the hangings and decorations of the chamber. Once or twice he went over to the large window facing south, and stuck his head and torso out, so that, for a moment, he forgot the terrible deed he had agreed to do. The front lawn was a torn mess of wolf prints and scorch marks, and the paws of what could only be lion tracks showed clearly in the bloodstained mud. What this mystery meant, he was too weary to wonder. He was sick of madness, tired of inexplicable events, and now he just wanted it to end. He had given his word to the woman for whom he would gladly have given the world. And now…

And now his world was gray and airless. He felt as if a coffin lid the size of the night sky now covered the Earth from horizon to horizon, as heavy and musty as the carved sarcophagus lid of some cursed Pharaoh whose name was effaced from all records and monuments. It was a world of death, without hope, without light, without life. He had already betrayed his friend, and now he was to kill him: or else he was to betray the girl whose life depended on Henry now, solely on him, and stand idly by while she died. And then he would leave the Rose Crystal Chamber, forgetting she was murdered by her husband, forgetting that he loved her, forgetting all … was that the price of being innocent? Merely not ever looking at one’s sins?

Every wrong he had ever committed in his life came flooding back to him, great and small. The candy he had stolen from his mother’s cabinet as a child. The fat kid he had beaten up in grammar school. The pornographic magazine he had kept at the bottom of his sock drawer when he was in high school. The time, on a dare, he had run across the stage naked during some school play. Stealing cigarettes from his father’s desk.

And then older, darker things. His mind was like a mob, a shouting crowd, all condemning him, all convicting him of crimes, of evil thoughts, and evil deeds. And yet what could he do? Honor demanded he be true and loyal to Manfred; and honor demanded he protect and love Laureline; and Mandrake meant to do her harm. Every sense of decency in him demanded Henry that he do the murder as he had promised. And yet the thing was impossible.

Henry looked up, and saw a way out. It was a coward’s way, but it was an out. It took only a few moments to find a stout cord hidden behind the draperies covering all the walls, to tie a noose. The rope was a bright pink.

He lowered the rose-shaped crystal lamp that gave the chamber its name. He tied the knot tightly to the final link in the chain, and hauled the chain back into position, looping the chain securely several times over the cast-iron stanchion.

A way out.

“Is there any other way?” he asked himself, looking at the noose. It seemed horrible that the rope should be pink, such a sweet, feminine color.

“But you are not strong enough to resist Laureline,” he told himself. And what if Mandrake walked in and tried to strangle her again? Even the imagination of her soft, fragile, beautiful throat being marred made him tremble with rage. To see it with his eye would drive him over the edge of madness. He would surely kill his best friend to save her. Henry had no doubt in his mind about his willingness and ability. Even the knowledge that his best friend was touching her, caressing her, coupling with her was enough to make the prospect of killing him enticing. And now, to have an excuse, a reason his conscience could not condemn—the temptation was too great.

He climbed up on a chair, adjusted the noose around his neck, and wondered if he were supposed to say a prayer before doing this. Somehow that did not seem right.

Henry’s thoughts spun and swirled like water down a drain. His mind and soul were empty save for one thought, more a picture than anything he could put in words: Mandrake will no doubt kill her once she steps over the threshold, but by then, Henry would be safely dead, in a happy oblivion, a swinging blob of meat, safe.

A small, quiet voice in his mind told him that this was wrong, utterly wrong. He put his neck in the loop nonetheless anyway, kicked the chair away.

Then his legs were kicking in the air, jerking comically and he was swaying, an erratic pendant. Suddenly, he knew what he was doing was wrong.

Desperate, he struck at the rope with his walking stick, that he found himself still holding in his hand. The rope parted and dropped him. The stick struck some of the lightbulbs: there was a flash of light as two of the bulbs shattered.

He coughed and writhed on the floor, drawing in great ragged gasps of breath. Then he knelt, the noose still around his neck like a halter meant to lead a bull. Henry stared at the cut end of the rope in puzzlement. It had been neatly severed. He looked at the cane in his hand. The eyes of the German hawk in the handle gazed back at him cryptically. Henry clearly recalled setting the walking stick by the door. He could not have been holding it when he tied the knots, for that required both hands. And no one carries a walking stick when he climbs a chair to hang himself.

There was no way it could have found itself in his hand. Henry looked up at the lamp. There it swayed, a bit of pink rope dangling down like the necktie of a drunk, rocking back and forth like the lantern of a ship at sea in a storm. This was an oil lamp, with no bulbs to break. And its red glass was unbroken.

He had climbed to his feet, and was righting the chair on which he so nearly ended his life when he heard from the stairs the lighthearted chatter of Laurel and the somber replies of Manfred.

“You’ll love what I have done with the chamber…” she was saying as she stepped into the room. Her eyes suddenly widened as her memories struck. Her eyes darted from Henry’s face to Manfred, who was smiling genially, his foot passing over the threshold.

Lithe as a lioness, Laureline leaped to the small end table where lay the syringe and her golden comb. Out from a little drawer she drew a kitchen knife as long as her forearm. With a harpy scream, she launched herself at Mandrake slashing with the knife and making a shallow cut on his brow and cheek. His eyes grew dark and stormy as his memory returned, and he fended her off, slapping the knife spinning out of her grasp, grabbing at her wrists, wincing as she bit him.

The limbs of the thickset man and the short woman were intertwined. Her spine was bent back almost to breaking. Perhaps he was manhandling her, or perhaps he was murdering her. There was blood on his face, and more blood on his forearm, but whether the knife cuts had been shallow or deep, Henry could not see. Laureline was screaming for Henry to come save her, save her.

Henry stepped forward and parted them. Mandrake was not a weak man, but he was smaller than Henry and no match for him.

“Now!” shouted Laureline. “Henry, now, strike now! Hit him!”

Henry took Laureline by the upper arm and Mandrake by the shoulder and forced them apart. He did not let go his grip, but looked them eye-to-eye, turning his head.

Henry saw no madness in the eye of Mandrake.

“What is this all about?” asked Mandrake grimly. “Why is there a pink noose around your neck?”

Henry said, “She says you mean to murder her, and that you already tried once.”